


The Inefficiencies of Language (all of them, including all 6,014 in the Waldorn hemisphere of Ensal)

by Banana_daiquiri



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humor, Romance, the Doctor's never-ending gob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-26 21:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5020804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Banana_daiquiri/pseuds/Banana_daiquiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor's spontaneous monologue to one Rose Tyler about the imprecision of (three) certain words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inefficiencies of Language (all of them, including all 6,014 in the Waldorn hemisphere of Ensal)

I will never say the words to you, because I want you to understand.

There are loopholes and gaps and blank spaces in language. In Gallifreyan, for instance, there is no word for "forever," nor is there a word for "love." Why? Wellll, put simply, the nature of time is just not conducive to forever; everything changes. Even the Time Lords had limited control over that. And they weren't particularly sentimental, so they never would have tried. But when you tell me "forever" it is so very human, and I need that about you, because when you say it I'm almost allowed to believe. Because you know...stuck with you is more than not so bad.

As for "love"...that's a concept that implies it's heavier than time; at the risk of sounding like a broken record, everything changes. The quality of the emotion _called_ love changes. The love one feels for a fiancee is different than the love one experiences in old age for the same person, who has long since become their spouse. Some things can't be quantified, qualified...people have created entire languages just to find a way to say something differently, to try to express what it is I'm driving at here. (I may never land accurately...we both know I'm a terrible pilot, let's be honest.)

For me, it's _this_ moment, whatever face I have. It's the realness of it, the urgency. It's what I mean when I say I want to take you everywhere. It's holding your hand whatever we're doing: tasting sixty-one flavors of pickled hot sauce, or discovering that the remedy for Formanian poison ivy is chocolate cake, or scouting the Muldavian flats to settle the old debate about how many legs a corvairan centipede has. The answer to that is twenty million, by the way. I was trying to put off seeing Jackie at Thanksgiving once and so I made a pit stop...but I digress.

Holiday traditions. That's a funny human thing. Like the one with the mistletoe. Your mother was particularly transparent with that...not that she's ever especially opaque. Jackie said I didn't have a romantic bone in my body, but I think it might be that one in my wrist--the weak one.

In truth I _would_ kiss you, Rose Tyler, but I'd hate to block your smile from my view for even a moment.

Or take it away entirely.

It's the way we see each other again after a particularly grueling mission, after the day has been won...you know, how our eyes meet across the room or the crowd and we freeze a moment before our smiles take off, like thieves, with all our reason--because we're in on the joke. I'm still not sure what that joke is, but as long as we're not the punch line I'd just like to stay in its making.

I know--even while I'm hanging in a dark abyss, about to drop into the unknown (funny how that hasn't happened more often)--that I will never ask someone else to say it for me, because it would still ring false. At the end of the day I think you'd know. If there were words. Any words that weren't inadequate, imprecise, fickle, and so well-abused.

When I spoke of the curse of the Time Lords, what I meant was the knowing: just as Mickey knew when you left with me that you were off to do greater things--well, so the universe and I both know that you are headed away from me. For things that I can't....

Ahem. Sorry, seasonal allergies.

I know, I'm rambling. So I'll just put a cork in it by saying that when I'm excited to show you apple grass, or a species you haven't seen before, or I find any flimsy excuse to sweep you up against me, or I ramble on so long about the way bananas are traditionally prepared for eating across the galaxies that you fall asleep and drool on my coat and I have to have the TARDIS dry clean it and I act irritated but what I really loved most about the whole thing was that your body was soft next to mine and your hand fell on my knee and you snored a little--what I mean is, well...well.

Rose Tyler. Rose Marion Tyler....

Everything I am in this body was being designed from the moment you gave me your first tongue-touched grin. I'll never say it aloud, even though it's as much a part of me--as true and as powerful and as unbreakable--as my birth name.

Does it really need saying?


End file.
